


the ashes underneath your nails

by Knightblazer



Category: Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012), The Incredible Hulk (2008)
Genre: Character Study, Experimental, F/M, Familial Abuse, Introspection, M/M, Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-21
Updated: 2013-04-21
Packaged: 2017-12-09 02:48:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/769081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Knightblazer/pseuds/Knightblazer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Scars are lasting. Ghosts are forever.</i> (Introspection, experimental and something of a character study on Bruce Banner.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	the ashes underneath your nails

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [singing with skin and bone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/434994) by [restlesslikeme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/restlesslikeme/pseuds/restlesslikeme). 
  * Inspired by [the body as two, made whole](https://archiveofourown.org/works/436274) by [weatheredlaw](https://archiveofourown.org/users/weatheredlaw/pseuds/weatheredlaw). 



> Something I had in my head for a long while and finally managed to get it out after a fair bit of struggle. Very much experimental all around, and heavily inspired by the two works above which are both beautiful fics in their own right and deserves to be read if you like Bruce Banner. I know I do. |D; Aside from that, this fic is dedicated to my Tony #2 for being wonderful and amazing and putting up with all my spam, especially of the sciencebros variety. ♥ Love you, bb.
> 
> Title of the fic comes from [31_days](http://31-days.livejournal.com/), with the prompt for 24th April 2013. Trigger warnings are stated in the tags, so do take note. Unbeta'd as always, so forgive any and all errors that come up throughout this thing. I hope you guys enjoy this fic!

Scars are lasting—that is a fact that Bruce knows well. They hurt and they sting and they leave their mark, slowly fading, a lasting presence. Sometimes a reminder of things that were and were not to be. 

He remembers tracing them when he was younger, fingertips lightly pressing upon marked skin as he felt the indentations and scabs under the skin of his nails, the rough texture of skin broken and then healed by itself without fail. A miracle that the human body performs, some might say. A self-defence mechanism. Every time the body sustains damage it repairs itself over time. A fracture, a crack, a wound, a scab—in the end they always heal, and then they leave their scars.

Scars are lasting. Bruce knows that.

Ghosts are forever.

Bruce knows that too.

*

He flits around from city to city, country to country, never staying for long, never settling down. His things (however meagre they are) are always packed and ready to be picked up at a moment’s notice. Bruce doesn’t take chances, doesn’t take risks because he can’t afford risks and he’s never had chances. It’s always circumstance after circumstance and there’s never been a moment in life where he’s had a choice, had a road to choose, a path to decide on.

Bruce runs because he cannot stop. He runs because once he stops he can only see a single road lying before him and not a world. When he runs, he can still try to convince himself otherwise.

When he runs, he can continue to imagine that the world is with him when he knows it’s not.

He is a ghost of his own making.

*

When he was ten Bruce remembers picking up a book on psychology while he was in the library. He had finished classes hours ago but he doesn’t want to go back home yet because that meant facing his father and last night had been a bad night. His arms and chest are still sore and bruised and he’s had to hide it all with a long-sleeved sweater his mother had knitted for him last Christmas.

He brings the book onto the nearby table and reads it. The words _trauma_ and _disorder_ and _lack of control_ jump at him and sink into his mind and Bruce keeps them in his head hours later as he puts the book back on the shelf and grudgingly returns home for dinner. 

Two years later at his parents’ funeral the words come back to him, echoing in his mind as Bruce watches two identical black coffins lowered six feet into the ground.

He shoves the words all the way into the back of his head and makes himself forget them.

(He never does.)

*

He meets Betty Ross for the first time after giving a speech in the fifth seminar he had been invited to. 

She goes up to him after the seminar is over and tells him how impressed she is with his work. Bruce thinks she’s just being nice at first, but soon finds himself corrected. He invites her for dinner to discuss about it further. She accepts.

They keep this up for the next seminar he goes to, and the next, and the following one after that.

Another seven seminars later he gets a call from Thaddeus Ross who asks for Bruce’s experience in the field to develop a method to boost radiation resistance on soldiers in the battlefront.

Bruce takes a minute to think about it before he says yes.

*

The thing is, Bruce doesn’t like violence. He hates the necessity of it, to be honest, even though he understands why it has to exist in the world. Violence is ugly; violence is cruel. Violence tore his family and his life apart and even until now he’s clutching at the pieces, trying to put them back together.

How ironic is it that one who dislikes violence leaves nothing _but_ violence in his wake.

The other guy is a force of nature, a man made typhoon in the eye of a hurricane. Wherever it goes there’s nothing but violence and pain and destruction and Bruce’s lost count of how many bodies he’s left behind. How many people have suffered because of his own failures and shortcomings. 

He dreams about them, sometimes, of cold hands and bony, icy fingers that grip on his skin and drag him down to the two black coffins that lie six feet under the earth. 

He wakes up whenever he dreams about himself going under the ground and sees his hands tinged with green in the darkness, an inhuman growl rising from the back of his throat.

Bruce presses his hands to his face and recalls his breathing techniques, squashing down the pain, pushing away the guilt.

He tries to ignore the fact that his hands are always shaking when this happens.

*

People call him ‘Doctor’ when they need help and more than once Bruce wants to tell them to stop calling him that, for how can you call a man a doctor when he hurts and not heals?

*

The first time Bruce knows the name ‘Tony Stark’ is when he’s fourteen. He sees the name plastered over the science magazine he found amongst the stacks of untouched material in the library.

He picks the magazine up and glances at it, noting the caption right underneath the words.

 _He’s the same age as me,_ Bruce thinks in amazement as he looks at the photo and sees the teenager standing proudly alongside a man Bruce supposes is Tony Stark’s father. They’re both smiling, the teenager more than the man, and even then Bruce can see the small hint of egocentrism that bleeds through that face. A sign that says _look at me_ but unlike Bruce the world responded to him.

Of course, that might also be because he’s a Stark. It’s hard to not know the Stark name in this day and age.

Bruce looks at the caption, and then the photo again for a few more minutes before he quietly slips the magazine into his bag and brings it back with him. 

It takes a week before he can bring himself to read it.

He never returns the magazine, either.

*

Jennifer is the one who brings him to the psychiatrist because nobody else wants to, and Bruce is still too young to go off by himself. Too vulnerable, too, they would say, because it’s only been a week since the incident and the police haven’t found any clue to form a full story about the night when it all happened.

She waits outside as Bruce enters the room and settles on the giant plush chair in the middle, hands fidgeting once he’s seated and watches the psychiatrist come over to him in her own rolling chair.

“How are you today, Bruce?” she asks once she’s close, a smile crossing her face. Bruce thinks if he closes his eyes and imagines hard enough—replace the black hair with brown and blue eyes with hazel—he can see his mother’s face instead. His mother’s smile. The smell of her perfume as she held him close and hugged him in a way he misses dearly.

He looks up at the woman and tries to do that, but what greets him is nothing but the stale air of a clinic, the bruised points on his throat that still throb even until now.

Silence.

“Bruce?”

He opens his eyes and lies.

“I’m okay.”

(He’ll never be okay.)

*

When it happens Betty is the one who acts first, leaning over to place a kiss on Bruce’s cheek after their dinner (date? Bruce isn’t sure).

Bruce can only stare as Betty draws back, eyes wide as he simply looks at her and wonders what is going on.

“It’s okay if you don’t feel the same,” she assures him, reaching out to wrap fingers around one of his wrists. “I just wanted you to know, that’s all.”

She smiles at him then, and in that moment Bruce thinks about his mother and her smile, about the love pouring out of her. The love that he’s lost since he was twelve but thinks that maybe, just maybe, he can have it back now. Not the same, but close enough. Perhaps now he can start to put his life back together again.

Betty starts to lean away but Bruce moves in now, leaning forward and placing a cautious kiss on her cheek back in return.

“I’m not a good guy,” he says, because he needs to let her know. Needs to tell her what she’s getting into, the danger that he presents. He doesn’t want to be his father.

The smile on her face remains clear. “Nobody’s perfect,” she returns, and presses their foreheads together. “But you’re as close as anybody can ever get to that for me.”

In that moment, Bruce thinks he can believe in her words.

*

There are days where Bruce wants to do nothing but rage at the world and let out the monster under his skin, because he’s sick and tired of having to run all the time, tired of the pain and despair. Tired of being _angry_ all the time. Sometimes he thinks just how easy it would be to give in to the rage and let it howl forever, longer than a tsunami or an earthquake or an exploding volcano.

He thinks of that and then he thinks of his mother and Jennifer and Betty and then he closes his eyes and forces himself to simply _breathe._

When he opens his eyes again he pushes those thoughts aside and continues to lose himself in the chaos of Calcutta, letting the noise and shouts and music wrap around him and drag him away from the world.

*

Bruce knows that going with SHIELD meant that he was going to have to face Tony Stark eventually—he’s read the files that Agent Romanoff passed to him on the flight over to the Helicarrier. Honestly, it is a bit surreal. Once upon a time Bruce knows that this would have made him leapt in joy, made him happy, made him smile and grin.

Now there’s nothing but a tired acceptance and a quiet dread on what would happen. Tony Stark embodies the success of where he had failed, the national treasure that everyone loves, the man who _from the ashes of captivity never has been a phoenix metaphor been more personified_ , the man who has everything while Bruce himself has nothing. He thinks of that and the brand that’s stamped on the weapons Ross brings with him everything he’s tried to catch Bruce across the world.

He tries not to falter the moment he hears the voice and it’s a near thing, but his head turns around all the same because his mind is screaming _this is it this is it_ and a part of him wants to move but he’s rooted to the spot, unable to do anything more than to watch as Tony Stark saunters in and instantly acts like he owns the place. His hands twitch and Bruce fiddles with them, forcing himself to be calm. He can’t lose it now.

It works up until the man prompts the rest of them and Bruce speaks before he can help himself. How long as it been since he could talk with anybody like that? Who could ever match up to the genius of Tony Stark? How long has Bruce wanted to meet the man in the flesh and say how much he admired his work, his genius, the fact that he’s been trying to follow his footsteps since he was fourteen and failed where Tony Stark himself succeeded?

Bruce stills himself in his mind as Tony Stark walks up to him and glances at him like he’s a machine to take apart. An equation that needs to be solved. And then he reaches out and Bruce does the same and they shake hands, and Bruce feels his skin crackle as he feels the rough calluses of Stark’s palm brushing against his own soft fingers. Hears the man compliment on his work, and the slight falter in his voice as he brings up the other guy.

He feels his lips attempting to twist wryly and manages not to show it, but he makes a face anyway because he’s not quite sure what to say. Nobody has brought up the other guy like that before, even if the fear is still there. (Or was it something else?)

“Thanks,” he manages out eventually, since he figures it’s only polite to respond _somehow_.

*

It takes being mugged in Norway for Bruce to discover about the regenerative abilities of the other guy.

In retrospect he supposes that it’s not something he should be wholly surprised about—he’s always changed before anything could hurt him up until then, and he had been completely caught unawares in this incident. He remembers that the blade was still stuck inside him when he turned, the monster tearing out of his skin as fire burns his eyes and claws through his skin.

It hurts every time when he changes. His bones crack, his muscles expand, he gets heavier and nobody on Earth was supposed to be like this. No human was made to properly adapt this sort of change and in that moment after everything Bruce understands this fact more than ever.

In the days after that Bruce stands in front of a mirror without his shirt and properly examines his body and sees the almost baby-like softness of his skin. He twists around and sees the scars of his childhood healed and gone, and when he raises his head he can’t find the imprints of fingertips around his neck.

The other guy healed it all up when he changed. All his scars are gone now, vanished into the wind.

No.

Vanished, but never gone. They’re just ghosts now. The ghosts of scars. 

Scars are lasting. Ghosts are forever.

Bruce closes his eyes and makes himself breathe.

*

In his darkest, deepest nightmares he dreams of green tiles and green walls and a green shirt as he’s dragged out from under the table and slammed into the wall, giant hands pressing tightly around his throat as they squeeze and squeeze and squeeze and Bruce can hear himself breaking apart and pleading, wetting his pants as he calls for a mother who he now knows lies nearby with a pool of red forming around her body. 

He struggles and tries to uselessly pry the hands away from him but they are strong and unyielding and keep holding him against the wall, his air cutting off as Bruce’s eyes water up and he screams inside, begging for help when he knows there’s none. He only sees a dark silhouette in front of him, the edges tinged green as there’s a snarl and the pain increases and there’s a howl inside him as he’s choking, crying, _breaking_ —

Bruce wakes up from those dreams in a shaking ball of nerves and adrenaline and pain and fear and keeps telling himself to breathe and breathe and _breathe_.

*

“I’m not sure if we should do this, Bruce.”

Betty has a reason to be cautious, he knows that she has, but he still can’t help but make a face because Betty of all people should understand why he’s doing this.

“Just think of all the attention we’ll have once this succeeds,” he returns, waving excitedly. “The media! The government! Even your father can’t deny our success once it’s there, Betty. We can finally move on from all of this to better heights.”

A wry smile crosses her face. “But what happens if it _fails_ , Bruce? What then?”

He wishes he could have listened to her back then instead of being caught up in his own excitement. His desire to reach for the stars. His childhood dream of being in the same level as Tony Stark himself. 

(If only, if only, if only.)

Instead all he did then is to reach over and hold her hands, smiling brightly. “Who do you think you’re talking to?” he returns, bending down to kiss the backs of her hands. “If there’s anybody who knows what he’s doing, it’s me. Trust me, Betty, after tomorrow our faces will be all over the news.”

Betty shakes her head in fond exasperation, but there’s a smile on her face and she moves her hands to grab Bruce’s own wrists now and brings it up. “I’ve never seen you this excited before,” she remarks fondly before returning his earlier gesture with her own.

Bruce grins as he curls his palms around her face and pulls her in, leaning in to place a kiss.

“It’s going to change our lives forever,” he says with a confident smile. “Of course I’m going to be excited.”

The next day he sits on the chair and tries not to tremble with the prospects of his success, watching as the other scientists calibrate the machine. He glances over to Betty who looks at him worriedly at through the glass and he flashes a wink at her. He’s going to succeed. _They’re_ going to succeed, and tonight they’ll celebrate it right and proper.

He keeps his gaze at her as the gamma pulse comes close, and he readies himself for it.

The next thing he remembers is pain pain _pain_ and he’s vaguely aware that he’s screaming but it’s still nothing compared to the pain. His mind flashes back to the green tiles and walls and shirt and the hands around his throat and he’s splintering apart but coming back together because he’s stronger now, stronger than that weak twelve year old who couldn’t do anything.

There’s pain and fire and rage and _crush crush crush_ he needs to crush it all away, needs to smash away the pain and everything that hurts him—

—he’s roaring, he’s shouting and the world is shifting changing moving fighting attacking _hurting_ —

*

He remembers the first time when his father beats him and he remembers how much it _hurts_ , the pain and agony and knife-sharp twist of betrayal. 

He remembers curling up into a ball on the floor as his father hits him again and again and again, calling him names each time, leaving bruises and scars that last for years after that.

_Monster. Freak. Abomination._

The words haunt him forever.

*

He sees the fear in Natasha Romanoff’s eyes as she greets him, watches as she circles around him delicately like he’s something waiting to break and snap.

She tells him about SHIELD and the Tessaract and all Bruce can think in that moment is _so they need a monster to find a monster_ because why else would they find him?

He shouts at her because he can, because he’s had so little choices in his life and he’s got nothing to lose at this point. Even though he knows later that she’s a master spy and assassin all he can see in that moment is the absolute look of fear and terror in her eyes. Nothing can really stand their ground when it comes to the other guy.

Sometimes Bruce wonders if he’s the same as well. Maybe he is. Maybe he isn’t.

Maybe it has never mattered for him.

He’s a ghost of his own making.

*

He does it after Harlem, after he realizes that there’s nothing in the world that can let him be rid of the other guy. After he understands that there will always be people after the other guy and Bruce knows that nobody else can get their hands on him. On it. There’s no cure, no hope, and no matter what he does or how he tries the monster will forever rage under his skin and in the back of his head, roaring to come out and crush and destroy. People will always get hurt. Bodies will keep on stacking up as long as he’s around and the dreams have haunted him long enough.

It’s a long way up to the Arctic but at least there’ll be nobody at the edge of the world. Nobody who’ll come all the way here for a corpse that’s frozen and brittle, to find blood that’ll dry up and disappear into the ice. He’ll disappear forever and nobody will ever think to find him here. 

The wind bites at him and goes all the way into his bones but Bruce keeps moving, going as deep as he can into the cold. He forces himself to keep going until the snow blocks his vision and he can feel the chill numbing his fingers and tones, nerves dying from the cold—the same cold that grips his skin in the dreams of the dead.

He falls onto the ground upon his knees and takes out the handgun underneath the layers of his clothing. If his hands are shaking, Bruce can no longer feel it. 

He puts the gun between his lips. Feels the metal sticking to his skin as his tongue tastes frozen steel, the cold of it chilling him to the core.

Bruce wonders if that is how death tastes like.

He supposes he’ll find out soon enough.

Bruce closes his eyes and pulls the trigger—

*

“—I put a bullet in my mouth and the other guy spit it out.”

He says it aloud because they all think he’s still trying but the truth is that he’s stopped trying long ago, for when even death rejects you there’s nothing else you can do but move on.

*

Tony Stark prods him and teases him and jokes and pulls him along to his own rhythm and Bruce can’t help but get swept along with it. He can’t remember the last time he could fall in line so easily like this, can’t think of when there’s somebody who can understand everything that he says so easily. It feels good to have somebody he can talk to properly, even if that person is Tony Stark.

He’s still cautious, but it’s hard to keep that up when it’s just so easy to be with him, so simple. No need for subtleties or holding himself back because Stark goes right to the point and tells him to _stop tiptoeing and strut_. Bruce wishes it could be that easy, but he appreciates the sentiment anyway. Appreciates that Tony Stark simply treats him as another person and not the monster that lies under his skin.

When he tells about his attempt he says it because he wants Stark to hear it, to know that this is what Bruce himself has been reduced to—a ghost of a man living with a beast. He says it out because he’s angry and tired and wants to know just _why_ it is that Tony has everything when he has nothing. It’s not fair.

Life has never been fair.

*

Ross caught him a total of one time, when Bruce had just fled the country and was still trying to find out how to do it properly. 

He catches him in Canada and drags him back to American soil, to some place in New Mexico that all Bruce can remember of is sand and dust and blood. They set iron bands around his neck and wrists and ankles and keep him in a room fortified for a tank.

The air is stale and seems to contain more carbon dioxide than oxygen. The iron bites at his skin and pulls his whole body down. They give him the bare minimum of food and water and poke him with needles daily. He forces himself to breathe through it all even as he tastes dust and dirt every time he moves his lips.

He manages to last until Ross comes in for the third time and goes into the room to snarl at Bruce’s face.

“You’re a failure, Banner,” he tells him, spit flying out from his mouth and landing on his face. “A monster.”

Ross moves his hand then and Bruce flashes back to the night of green and red and imagines (feels?) fingertips pressing against his neck.

He wakes up in the wilderness a day later naked and tired and sore and tries not to remember the fragments of memories lurking around his head as he washes his bloodied hands in a nearby stream. 

(His father was right. He really is a monster.)

*

After Thor takes Loki away the team split up, each of them going their own separate ways. Steve goes on a trip across the country to see how things have changed during his seventy year sleep. Agent Barton and Romanoff head off to do whatever it was that SHIELD spies did in their free time. And Bruce… Bruce knows he should be leaving, he’s got his bag ready, his fake passports and documents all inside, given to him by SHIELD. He should leave.

He should be gone.

“C’mon, Banner,” Stark wheedles at him with a small pout. “Just a few days. Candyland, just like I promised. It won’t hurt, right?”

He should tell Stark to bring him to the Port of Authority because there’s nothing for him here now and he needs to go, has to go. Should go.

“Just a few days,” Stark repeats, nudging him lightly at the side.

He doesn’t belong here.

“Candyland.”

He needs to leave.

“I’ve got a particle accelerator.”

Bruce opens his eyes and lies.

“Just a few days.”

(It won’t be.)

*

When Betty was hospitalized after the incident in the lab Bruce always stayed by her side, sitting next to her bed and holding her hand and apologizing over and over again because it’s all his fault. He should have listened to her. Should have been more careful. Should not have done this in the first place.

Now she’s the one who’s paying the price and it breaks his heart.

He holds her and closes his eyes and breathes, trying not to think of his mother, her blood staining the kitchen tiles. Tries not to think of how fragile Betty is to him now, of how she was almost crushed by the _thing_ that came out. Words from long ago spring in his mind once more, but this time Bruce can’t push them back.

They haunt him, just like so many other things that will come to haunt him in the years that pass.

*

A few days inevitably become a few weeks, and Bruce knows he really should leave but he really can’t pry himself away from the security and comfort of the tower, of Tony—of _Stark’s_ equipment and permission for Bruce to do anything he wants. He misses this, misses being able to do his work, to do the things he likes to do and not worry about it.

He helps Stark with the suit and improves on the arc reactor and when Stark sees it he laughs and whoops and claps Bruce on the back, grinning like a five year old.

“That’s amazing, Banner,” he guffaws out, already grabbing the design and tossing it over to his side of the lab to fine tune it further. “Really. You’re amazing. Why didn’t I find you before? I would have hired you in a heartbeat.”

Bruce smiles and ducks his head shyly—a force of habit more than anything else. “No time like the present to correct that, right?” he says without thinking, and then he pauses when he realizes just what exactly he had said.

If Stark notices it he doesn’t point it out. All he does is to give Bruce another pat on the shoulder and brush past him back to his side of the lab, leaving Bruce to his own thoughts.

Bruce lets himself follow Stark’s figure for a while, but then forces himself to look away and back to his work.

He needs to leave, and soon.

He can’t stay here anymore.

*

Bruce doesn’t have that many memories of his time as the other guy, and the same applies even during the battle in New York. There are fragments of memories, flashes and sounds and sometimes smells when it’s particularly strong, like gunpowder and blood. He remembers nearly crushing Betty in his hands, remembers some of the countless people who fell victim to the other guy’s rage. He mostly remembers death and the blood that soaks his hands.

In New York he doesn’t remember blood but thunder and lightning and explosions. Of flashes of broken metal and gunshots everywhere, this time not directed at him.

He remembers looking up and seeing a star falling through a hole in the sky, bright red and yellow and blazing through the blue as the air around it crackles and sparks and burns and blazes. He remembers the flare of a dying star as it descends towards the Earth, falling and falling and falling. Bruce remembers reaching towards the star with a hand that’s green and big and strong, a roar in his ears that is both his and not his as he flies though the air, the wind biting at his skin.

Bruce remembers reaching for the star and cradling it in his arms before it falls, shielding the blue-white flare that stands out from blazing bright red as he crashes to the ground.

He catches the star and keeps it alive.

*

The night before he leaves Stark pins him down onto the bed and kisses him, and his mouth tastes like fire and ice and rage. Of gunmetal and sand and dust, of the thin lines in between spaces where Bruce wants to curl into and fade away when the days go bad.

Bruce knows he should be pushing the other man away. Should tell him how much of this is a bad idea, how this won’t end well. How he’s going to be selfish and greedy and needy because he knows he’s wanted Tony Stark for a while now and wanted to leave before that need consumes him whole.

But Stark— _Tony_ kisses him with the words _don’t leave_ in between his lips and Bruce has always been a bleeding heart inside because he’s tired of running and being his own ghost and being angry. He drinks in the kisses like a man dying of thirst and clings onto the other like a lifeline, wrapping arms around Tony’s shoulders as he pulls the other man in and feels the heat of his body, the warmth going through the cold of his skin and seeping into his bones, coiling through the rage.

For all his rough edges and blunt words Tony is gentle when he handles Bruce through it all, lips never leaving his for a second as he pulls their pants down and presses their hips together and Bruce lets out a whimper as he feels just how needy he is. It’s been so long since anybody has been this close to him and he’s missed this—he’s craved for this, and he thinks that Tony knows that too.

“Shh,” Tony shushes him, whispering the words against his lips as he wraps his hand around them and strokes, every movement leaving echoes that ripple across his nerves. “Shh, Bruce. You’re good, you’re doing great. Just let me. I’ve got you.”

He has him. Tony has him and Bruce babbles mindlessly as Tony brings him closer and closer to the edge, begging and pleading and clutching at his shoulders, holding him tightly and refusing to let him go even as he falls and flies and splinters apart. 

Tony doesn’t say anything, only moans as he comes after him and strokes both of them through the aftershocks, nuzzling at his jaw and placing kisses across his face and down his neck.

_Stay with me. I’ve got you._

Bruce closes his eyes and breathes, and this time he can taste something warm and comforting on his lips.


End file.
